Jackie Bouvier. Torre recalls meeting Onassis when she visited Grey Gar- dens. He says that she used to call the house occasionally, to check on her aunt and cousin, and that she once asked him to take her out clubbing. He remem- bers bringing her to the Anvil, where they watched a fire-eating drag contor- tionist perform. Afterward, Onassis's driver took them back to her building, where she invited Torre up for a drink. "I said no thanks," he said. "I went back to the Anvil." After "Grey Gardens" was released, Torre says, he helped Edie out with a cabaret act that she had put together. But after Mrs. Beale died, in 1977, Edie sold the house, eventually moving to Florida (she died in 2002), and they lost touch. Torre took a job with the Saudi royal family, tending a two-and-a-half-acre tropical garden in Riyadh. He had his own villa, with a pool and a personal chef: but he found life lonely. After returning to the States, he moved to the East Village and opened an art-moving company, called AAA All-Boro Trucking. He ran the busi- ness with his boyfriend, who died in the late eighties. Despondent, Torre went into seclusion. He eventually moved to Sunnyside, Qyeens, where he lives now. He drives a taxi three days a week, and he spends most of his free time chatting on the Internet, working out, and carv- ing nude sculptures out of marble. He recently bought a copy of "The Mar- ble Faun" on Amawn, but he hasn't got around to reading it yet. The other day, Torre attended a pre- view of "Grey Gardens," the musical, in which the role of Jerry is played by a square-jawed young actor named Matt Cavenaugh. He wears a Newsday sweat- shirt and a painter's cap, as Torre did as a teen-ager, and what looks like a Beades wig. T orrè s eyes teared up several times during the show, particularly when, after a song called 'jerry Likes My Com," the stage Jerry said, ''You be good now, Mrs. Beale-you take care of yourself:" "It's actually a relief to see somebody playing me for a change," Torre said later. "He portrayed me as a little dim- witted, but otherwise it was pretty accu- rate." He added, "The depiction of J er- ry's hair-that wig he sported-it didn't quite work" -Adam Green 30 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 6, 2006 NEW ORLEANS POSTCARD CONSULAT D'INFLUENCE [t;iJ] A t the corner of Prytania and First Street, in New Orleans, stands a brick mansion with a French tricolor drooping from the gable. Eleven days after the levees failed, last August, heav- ily armed federal agents were banging on doors all over the city to order a "manda- tory evacuation," and the residents of the mansion were hastening to comply. A thin middle-aged man feverishly loaded :file boxes into the back of a silver S.U.V. He introduced himself as Pierre Lebov- ics, France's consul-general, and side- stepped the question about whether he felt that his rights had been violated by the evacuation order. "You have your, your-" he circled a hand impatiently in front of his face. "Your Bill of Rights, your Constitution." He flapped the hand dismissively and got behind the wheel. "I am going to Baton Rouge!" he shouted. " B I . ll " ut WI return. The house stayed empty for weeks, but recently Lebovics answered the door, in an open-necked shirt with a green cashmere sweater draped over his shoul- ders. Lebovics is fifty-four but looks much younger. He is serious to the point of dour, with longish dark curls and cir- cular horn-rimmed glasses. "France opened its first consulate in the United States right here in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803," he said as he sat himself primly on a red sofa. "But we have been in this house only since the nineteen -fifties." Lebovics spent most of his life as a Russian scholar, and after becoming a diplomat he was assigned, with the logic of foreign ministries worldwide, to two non - Russian-speaking countries: Israel and the Czech Republic. He took over in New Orleans less than a month be- fore Katrina hit, and, despite the chaos the storm has wrought, he relishes serv- ing in this most French of American cities. "There is a part of French culture tinged with Cajun and Creole culture," he said. "These roots run very deep in F " rance. New Orleans has long been a tourist destination for the French, several of whom got a lesson, from Katrina, in how American the city also is. 'The Saturday before the storm, I got a call from some French tourists who wanted to evacuate," Lebovics said. They went to the most logical place, for Europeans: the train station. "Someone had decided to close the railway station on the day they were telling people to evacuate. These tourists found that quite extraordinary." Lebovics enumerated the ways in which France has come to the aid of New Orleans, including sending tons of food and supplies, a team of divers to help as- sess and repair damage to the port, and funds to reopen bilingual-immersion schools where young teachers from France, on loan to Louisiana, have for thirty years taught what Lebovics called "French French." The French Minister of Culture, Re- naud Donnedieu de Vabres, was the first foreign dignitary to visit New Orleans after the storm, and the government quickly decided that France could be most useful in helping to preserve the city's artistic attributes. A "solidarity" concert in Paris raised money for musi- cians; the Louvre, the Georges Pompi- dou Center, and the Musée d'Orsay are planning a major exhibition ofF rench art at the New Orleans Museum of Art early next year. And the French government raised a million dollars for Louisiana schools. The French are offering six- week residencies in France for artists dis- placed by the flood. "The idea is to offer them good conditions-lodging and a stipend, and contacts with people," Leb- ovics said. "A fresh oxygen." Lebovics was looking forward to Mardi Gras this week; the mayor had invited him to be part of the delegation that welcomes Rex, the Mardi Gras king. "As Frenchmen, we are attached to whatever pertains to memory," he said. 'When you're raised in a house and you move away, and you pass by forty years later, you remember. It is the same with Louisiana. Katrina provoked an immediate outpouring of emotion in France that came from a feeling that this state and this city-we are attached to it. Whatever happened after the Purchase, we felt connected. This is a feeling you do not control. It was very fresh." -Dan Baum